Make a Hard Fist
Tina Shaw
OneTree House
Pub. 2019

 

July 05, 2021

Make a Hard Fist by Tina Shaw is an amazing, spooky story. I had shivers going up my spine as I got deeper into the book.

This book is about a young girl called Lizzie but she starts getting these letters. At first, she thinks it’s her friends sending them, but as more arrive, she realises she might just have a stalker.

I think the author’s aim is to warn people that stalking should not be seen as a joke and to be more careful.

I can relate quite a lot to Lizzie. We have a couple of things in common, and as the story went on, I started to put myself in her shoes and tried to think of what I would do in the same situation.

I felt as I read the book, that Lizzie’s parents weren’t doing enough to protect her and they were just not thinking of the future and more trying to push it behind them and pretend nothing happened when it did. I also found that there were not a lot of friends involved, except for her nemesis who she liked beating in races.

Something I particularly liked about this book was just how every sentence feels like shivers going up your spine and you’re thinking, “oh gosh, what is going to happen next?”

There were a few questions I had as I was reading, but I think I might have just missed a passage that had the answers or maybe it just was not clicking altogether for me. I had a couple of questions about Lizzie’s stalker’s intentions too.

I think this book is amazing and the author has a wonderful imagination. The description she puts into the writing is breathtaking. This is just my kind of book. It is a little spooky but not enough for nightmares – I’ll leave that to horror movies.

• Jessica Dowling is 13 and lives in Hamilton.